So many babies! (Earthbag/conventional hybrid rabbitry update)

The rabbitry is getting up to 22 degrees Celsius on sunny days and hovering near zero at night. We plan to backburry it in the summer (2016) but until then we've stacked straw bales along the outside of the north wall. We had to put in a wood stove for cold nights to prevent the water in the automated watering system from freezing on cold nights (anything around -15 or less).

After a few baby-less months filled with false pregnancies, baby eating, and birthing outside of the baby basket, we've finally got some success. Lots of success. 

Baby basket #1---each one is a different colour! There's six all together. Hard to see them all because they were a little cold and all trying to dive deeper into their nest.

Baby basket #2---these ones are all white with some small grey/black spots.

 

This is Ditto. She had five babies but two rolled away from the group and died of cold over the first couple of days. They are born naked and the moms don't sit on them like hens do to their eggs, so they survive through insulation (straw, newspaper shredding, and fur the mom pulls out of herself) and through body warmth (they all huddle together and take turns being in the middle). In the first few days if one or two get separated from the main group of babies, they can quickly die of hypothermia unless they find their way back to the group. In this pic they're about 2 weeks old so they've got enough fur on them to stay warm (hence why they've more or less tossed all the insulation aside). Ditto is super protective of them and they are getting so much milk from her---they are huge compared to the other babies!

Baby basket #3---I am sooo hoping the orange/grey one is a girl!

Baby basket #4---Dora with her four little ones.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Thank you everyone for your support this summer on the beginning stages of our build near Rivers! Although we spent a good chunk of the summer waiting on contractors, and we got about 0.1% of the tire pounding we hoped to get done, we did accomplish a lot this year: we finished our rabbitry (place to house our rabbits), got a gravel road into our property all the way to the spot where our earthship will be, made a dugout that we plan to stock with trout fingerlings in the spring, made a flat spot for the earthship to go, bought a mobile home, made a flat gravel pad for the mobile home, put skirting up on the mobile home and put staircases at both doors, and got some initial concrete work done. Oh and pounded like 10 tires :) We're calling it for the season. We'll be spending the next few weeks winterizing things, and then we'll be back at it at full tilt in the spring! (No contractors to wait on next summer, just lots and lots and lots of tires to pound!) Hope everyone had a great long weekend :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am thankful for Tom, who just finished building our rabbitry (place to house our rabbits), with all the bells and whistles (even an automated watering system!) I had the day off so I got to come out and inspect the final product. Here he is showing the bunbuns how to use the water nipples (aka having fun spraying them with water until he lowered the water pressure).

Couldn't do gravity-fed so we are using an electric pump to pump the water up to the top, and then this disk de-pressurizes the water so that the water doesn't spray at 100km/h into the bunnies' faces. Tom re-did the insulation so that there's air space below the roof, with vents, and then rigid foam. We had enough space up there that we were able to re-use the pink stuff below all that, but it does mean now the top cage is right up against the ceiling. 

The water pump.pressurizer. Some of the pink insulation that needs to be thrown out...don't mind that.

Stacking straw bales behind the rabbitry for good measure. Can't have the water freezing in the pipes.

Doe in shadow. Majestic :)

Electric & Plumbing in the Rabbitry

Tom did the electric one day and the plumbing the next. The electric is a few outlets on different breakers (so we can use multiple power tools at the same time) and a few overhead lights. The plumbing is a gravity fed watering system for the rabbits. We just need to build a small contraption to lift the water up high enough to allow gravity to do the work.

Little watering tubes for each cage.

Concrete

The concrete guys got around to doing our job earlier than expected. Yay! Had to take lots of pics as proof that everything was done to code.

"Yes yes, I like what you've done here."

Zilla was giving the concrete guys the evil eye the entire time. He was sure they were up to no good. The concrete guys told us they've never seen a dog who will stare at them even when they turn on all their loud machines. Normal dogs run for the hills as soon as they start using their equipment. But not Zilla. That pup is vigilant.

Soooo unbelievable happy this is all happening before the snow comes!! :)

More Rabbitry

Poop slopes lol. It adds to the overall height (which is bad since that means the top cages are hard to get to) but the poop will just roll down into containers that I can empty every so often. What doesn't roll can be squeegee'd. We had the same setup in the garage this past winter, and it worked great except in the garage we couldn't get in behind the cages, so some spots that were hard to get to from the front accumulated too much poop. Since there's three feet of space on each side of these cages in the new rabbitry, we'll have plenty of room.

The pieces of wood inside the cages are for the bunnies to chew on and lay on. They will be replaced periodically.

The wood is covered in two layers of plastic and it's anchored at the ends and the middle (to avoid sagging). It also sticks out 3 inches past all edges of the cages, which will help catch rogue poops so they don't go into the cages below.

I mentioned to Tom that it'd be good to get some lights and plugins in the building, and he bought all the stuff and wired it all in less than a day. I'll take a pic next time I'm out there.

Rabbitry

It's been 2 years in the making and still not quite done, but our rabbitry (which will have 27 holes when all said and done) is nearly complete. It will be interesting to track the inside temperature over the winter. So far it's almost too hot on sunny days so we might need to buy tarp and cover the windows in the summer.

Each long cage will house three individual units and there will be three long cages in each row and three rows. With poop bins under each row, and each cage being 20 inches tall, it will be about 9 feet in height all together. I'm toying with the idea of a ladder on wheels like in old school libraries in the movies. Not sure how else I'll be able to get up there and feed the top row of bunnies.

View from below. Each individual cage is 3 feet deep, 2.5 feet wide, and 20 inches tall. Lots of room! :)

Make sure the doors swing inward so if you forget to latch it, the bunnies can't get loose.

Windows

We put the windows in the rabbitry today (the rabbitry is earthbag/conventional hybrid). We bought the windows from the restore for super cheap about 1.5 yrs ago and then built based on the dimensions of the windows (and based on how much space each rabbit needs). Due to some setbacks, we only just now finished the rabbitry, so the windows were sitting outside in the snow/rain/sun for all that time. One cracked, but honestly I'm surprised the other five survived! Thanks to Pete for the help! And now to practice our cobbing skills... The plan is to finish all these side jobs so we can then fully focus on the house. Too many distractions!

The windows are super dirty from sitting around outside for so long. The suction cups were awesome! Would highly recommend if you're ever lifting 100+ pound windows.

We plan to cob all the exterior to make it look more earthen and pretty.

Zilla's pooped out! What a day!

We loaded the windows into the truck, drove them up to be parallel to the wall, and lifted/set them in place.

Quick! Before summer's over!

Everything needed to do the concrete pour (except the concrete---to be delivered the day we need it) Hoping to get this done soon!

Inside the rabbitry. Adding insulation.

The rabbitry is 10 feet deep and 30 feet wide. Almost done!

Painting the skirting for the mobile home.

Update

We were finally able to get a quote from some concrete guys. We need a little bit of concrete poured under the side walls and front to comply with building permits. Hope to get that done before it gets too cold! The excavators took so long that once they were done it was hard to find anyone with the time to do the concrete. Will have to take lots of pictures as it happens as "proof" of the rebar that will be in the concrete (which is needed for structural integrity). Things are really starting to pick up! Too bad it's Aug 29 and not, say, June 29 :P Here's hoping for a mild autumn...

We'll be having a few volunteers come for Sept. long to help out. If you want to join, give me a shout! 

What Tom was up to while I was in China

It was waaaay to hot out for Tom to pound tires while I was away in China, so he turned his focus to other things. We were in the market for a cheap trailer or shed to use as a chicken coop in the near future, and so of course an old 54 foot by 12 foot mobile home was only natural :P It's set up on a nice level pad with blocks so it (hopefully) won't sink in 30+ years. Still need to do a few things to it (tear out some carpet and lay lino for easy cleaning, replace a few ceiling tiles, build steps, add some skirting), but it's basically ready and waiting for chickens. Not sure if we'll be ready for chickens by next spring though. 

 

This (below) will be our rabbitry (a place to house our rabbits). Large windows to let light in. The rabbits will be in cages inside because (1) we don't want them eaten by predators, and (2) our ground isn't totally flat making it nearly impossible to fence them into a small outdoor area. We bought the huge windows first and based the dimensions of the building off the dimensions of the windows and the cages. Cages should be about 1 square root per pound of rabbit, so if your rabbits are 6 pounds you want the cages to be say 2 feet by 3 feet. Not only do you need large cages but there needs to be 3 feet of space all around the cages to facilitate cleaning. Trust me, that is very important!

Rabbitry

Roof pic (rabbitry).

 We'll do the same rainwater collection idea from the earthship with the rabbitry (and eventually the mobile home chicken coop). Rabbits can drink 1L a day each. By next summer we should have enough money to deal with backburying a cistern.The plan is to hook up a pump and a bunch of pipes with water valves along the cages so it will be a totally automated watering system.

Rabbitry + shed roof.

This (above) is the join between the rabbitry and the attached shed. The entire thing (rabbitry + shed) was supposed to be earthbag construction, but things didn't quite work out so the rabbitry is only maybe 3 ft earthbag and the rest regular wood construction, and the shorter and smaller 10ft x 10ft shed is all earthbag)

A view from the roof

Rabbitry + shed

22 inch lawn mower that can't quite handle 10 acres! Holly cow those weeds grow like...weeds. Camper in background.

We need some goats to take care of these weeds!

China

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I was out in China for work for two weeks and didn't realize the extent of internet censorship out there, so I couldn't check my email or update the blog or facebook group. There's not much for updates, we had a couple couples visit to help Tom out while I was away, but the weather did not cooperate (in one instance there was a heat wave warning and people were told not to do anything outside, and in another it had rained so much that tire pounding was impossible). Thanks to those who came out and visited; hopefully the weather cooperates in the future!

Tire Pounding

First row of tires along the back is done! The tarp and tires on top are just to keep the rain from getting in. Grass is already growing on our dirt pile. Nature's way of telling us we're going too slow...

This is our platform of compressed dirt the excavators made for the home to go on. It's just about a foot above the rest of the ground. Just an easy way to get things level. Some of our culverts arrived (you can see them poking out in the left of the photo). Still not quite ready to put them in yet. The rest should be arriving early next week (the company miscounted their stock).

Zilla surveying his kingdom.

Go Fund Me

Tom started a Go Fund Me campaign where anyone can donate to help out with the costs of building our earthship. The cheapest earthships I've heard of being built (maybe around $70,000) are when the husband/wife/immediate family members are engineers, contractors, and/or tradespeople, who can use their connections to get wholesale prices and call in favours from friends. Even then it's still a lot of work! We unfortunately have no connections so we seem to be paying a premium for everything. I have heard of earthships costing as much as $400,000 (yikes!). Some people are on a very tight timeline so they are forced to pay more. The one near Winnipeg wound up being $250,000+. We are trying to keep costs reasonable by taking our time and finding deals, but since Brandon and area is still in the "boom" phase, deals are hard to come by. Any donations are much appreciated and can be easily made by following the link above :)

Alumni News

We've gotten lots of emails from Brandon University alumni after our story was featured in their Alumni News (page 26 of 32 in the pdf). I've been told the story also wound up in the Solar Energy Society of Alberta newsletter. Cool! Lots of alumni from the '60's and '70's have been living sustainably for years, and are happy/excited to see people from the younger generation trying it too (I honestly have no idea what generation I am---generation next? what came after next?)

First tire row...

The radon and septic pipes still haven't been layed, but in the meantime we can get started on the back wall, since the pipes are all near the front. Here's some pics of Tom getting started. The first row takes a lot of time because all the measurements have to be bang on.

 The excavators flattened a platform of dirt for our home to go on, and made a huge pile of dirt next to it to fill the tires with.

Now to call the fire commissioner so she can come out and inspect. The municipality knows it's going to be a long-term project, but they want to make sure we break ground this summer.